A land reduced to rubble after 19 months of carnage

Gaza is on the brink of famine after Israel's three-month blockade, the UN warns. Chief international correspondent Bel Trew looks at how the Palestinians got to this point

- 

Amid an apocalyptic humanitarian crisis in Gaza and mounting global pressure, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed ahead with a deeply controversial new plan to deliver supplies to the besieged strip.

In a rare press conference on Wednesday night, Netanyahu said that in the "coming days", they would enact the scheme, which would replace the existing UN-led aid distribution system in Gaza with a new arrangement under full Israeli control.

He said his forces would begin corralling the two-million-strong population of Gaza into a "sterile zone" in the south of the Strip, free from Hamas militants, where the Israeli military would oversee the delivery of supplies at a small number of distribution hubs directed by a private US-backed group known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Armed private contractors would guard the distribution. The UN and other humanitarian groups say it enables Israel to use aid as a weapon and forcibly displace civilians.

The situation in Gaza, after Israel imposed a full three-month total blockade on supplies and launched a renewed "intensive" expanded operation, is so catastrophic that it has pushed the entire population to the brink of famine, according to the UN's global hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). So far, only a handful of trucks of supplies have been let back in.

This has sparked rare global action from Israel's allies, as the country increasingly becomes a global pariah.

This week, UK foreign secretary David Lammy described Israel's blockade and intensified fighting as "monstrous" before announcing a formal pause in free trade negotiations with Israel and summoning Israel's ambassador to London.